Sighs of Relief as Jerome Powell Signals Interest Rate Cuts

Sighs of Relief as Jerome Powell Signals Interest Rate Cuts Dear Reader, In the next couple of weeks Commercial Observer will be rolling out our brand new newsletter, Capital Observer, which will be a hub for CRE investment news — and as a Finance Weekly subscriber, you’ll get exclusive early access to the newsletter. We’ll take you behind the scenes of today's biggest investment firms, and speak with the key players making the decisions. From core strategies to acquisitions and dispositions — your burning investment questions, answered. So look out for Capital Observer this September, and in the meantime, please enjoy the finance content below! Best, CO’s Finance Team   This week, the commercial real estate industry received encouraging news from Jerome Powell’s annual Jackson Hole speech, where the Fed chairman gave his strongest signal yet of looming interest rate cuts; Starwood supplied a $301 million refinance on Tishman Speyer’s The Wheeler, a mixed-use office building in Downtown Brooklyn built atop a 1929-built Macy’s department store; Doug Durst explains why he is bullish on the state of the Class A office market; and the nightmare may be over for New Jersey’s American Dream mall after its owner began to pay back two years worth of outstanding missing interest payments on its outstanding debt. Fed Chair Jerome Powell Signals Near-Term Rate Cuts in Jackson Hole Speech Powell said the central bank is finally positioned to shift its focus after bringing short-term borrowing costs to their highest levels in more than two decades, citing progress in fighting inflation.. [Read More]( Top Deals Of The Week   - [Starwood]( Provides $301M Refi on Brooklyn Office & Macy’s Building - Apollo Provides [$234M]( Construction Loan for Luxury Rosewood Residences in Florida - Nuveen Green Capital Supplies $190M [C-PACE]( Loan on Virgin Hotels Las Vegas - [Vanderbilt Office Properties]( Refis West Palm Building With $96M - Pacific Life Lends $73M to Build [FSU Student Housing]( in Tallahassee - PGIM Real Estate Supplies $64M Acquisition Loan for NJ [Industrial Park]( - [JP Morgan Real Estate Income Trust]( Lends $62M on South Carolina Apartments Acquisition - Nuveen Real Estate Provides $44M Refi for [New Jersey]( Apartment Complex Guest Columnist   Never Mind the Headlines — Much of the Office Market Has Rebounded The Class A office market in major cities is doing particularly well, writes Douglas Durst, chairman of The Durst Organization. [Read More]( People Moves   Frank Cohen Steps Down as Blackstone’s BREIT CEO With Wesley LePatner Taking Over Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust appointed current Chief Operating Officer Wesley LePatner to be its new leader, effective Jan. 1, 2025. [Read More](   Other Stories From This Week   Plymouth Industrial REIT and Sixth Street Form $250M Partnership Marcos Alvarado’s investment firm is buying a 65 percent stake in the REIT’s 5.9 million-square-foot Chicago industrial portfolio. [Read More]( Tessler’s 172 Madison Avenue Facing Foreclosure on $88M Loan The mostly empty Madison Avenue condominium tower, where Leonardo DiCaprio once rented a pad, was hit with a foreclosure case after defaulting on an $87.6 million mortgage. [Read More]( American Dream Mall Begins to Pay Back Years of Debt After two years of missing interest payments for $287 million in municipal bonds issued for the megamall’s construction, American Dream’s owner Triple Five Group will begin to pay back bondholders next week. [Read More]( Demand for U.S. Data Centers Surges Despite Labor Gap, Power Strain The country’s data center market has doubled in size since 2020, with vacancy rates hitting a record low of 3 percent by the end of the first half of 2024, according to a JLL report. [Read More]( What We're Reading This Week   - A $557 billion drop in office values [eclipses]( a revival of cities [Bloomberg] - The private-equity scion [buying up]( America’s trophy homes [WSJ] - [NFL]( wants a cut of private equity investment profits [CNBC]   [View in Browser]( | [Advertise]( | [Forward to a Friend]( [Manage your email preferences or unsubscribe]( [Share your thoughts: Help us improve with our quick feedback survey!]( [Commercial Observer]( © Copyright 2024 [Observer Media]( 1 Whitehall Street, Floor 7, New York, NY 10004 This newsletter was published 08/29/2024